By Ken Sakamoto, Star-Bulletin
Cost for talk tree ranges from $25 to $40.
Falling somewhere in between Christmas-cute and Halloween-creepy for decorating this holiday season is the inexplicably popular "Douglas Fir, The Talking Tree." Average-retailing at various shops around town for somewhere between $25 and $40 -- we got ours at Longs Drugs for $39.95 -- it's a spiky-looking small artificial Christmas tree. Douglas Fir tuned up
with carols and holiday rapBut pass in front of tiny motion detector hidden in the needles and suddenly the tree's branches blink, a red mouth opens, and an anthropomorphic face chirps "Merry Christmas!," sings a song and then says "Happy New Year!" and then the branches close up and it looks like a regular tree again. Depending on your state of mind or level of medication, it's either absolutely charming or downright frightening.
The face looks like Crow from "Mystery Science Theater 3000" with a bad case of lichen.
Douglas has a repertoire of three songs, which can get pretty repetitious. But you can also run in another audio feed from a cassette or CD player or a microphone and the tree will lip-synch along with your favorite songs, or just haver while you're around the corner babbling into the mike. The sight of Douglas Fir singing along with Hawaiian pop tunes reduced this hard-bitten office staff to tears.
A similar model, Everett Green by Telco Industries, is available as well.
Made in China (what MUST they think there?) and imported by Gemmy Industries of Texas, Douglas Fir comes with a 7-volt voltage converter, extra bulbs for the eyes, an audio-patch cable, a tiny Santa cap and a cassette tape of "Douglas Fir" singing carols and rapping goofily.
By Burl Burlingame, Star-Bulletin
